The Quiet Before the Shots

By Steve Smith

Nov. 11, 2013

Next to birthdays of prominent public figures, nothing engenders mass reflection and artistic endeavor as readily as big, round anniversaries of historical milestones. We’re just 10 days away from one such date: Nov. 22, the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, which after half a century continues to take a dramatic toll on the collective American psyche.

Remembrances of that occasion are sure to mount as days go by. But on Friday night, Symphony Space adopted a provocative approach to commemoration with a program titled “November 21, 1963: The Day Before,” a multidisciplinary event involving dozens of writers, actors, visual artists, filmmakers and composers.

Long a haven for the spoken word, Symphony Space is well practiced at programs involving literature. Since the composer Laura Kaminsky became the institution’s artistic director in 2010, music has become more integral to its programming mission. “November 21,” conceived and produced in conjunction with the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, Fla., enlisted dozens of the retreat’s fellows to create works in response to its titular theme.

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Kamala Sankaram performing in the program “November 21, 1963: The Day Before.”CreditHiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

Much of the evening’s activity was entrusted to a fine core ensemble: the actors Eisa Davis, Olympia Dukakis, Carson Grant and B D Wong; the singers Megan Weston and Robert Osborne; and the pianist Margaret Kampmeier. Mostly fascinating, if decidedly overlong at almost three and a half hours, “November 21” evoked in 36 brief segments the world on the day before it was forever changed.

The most powerful offering was also the most chilling. The playwright John Guare, recalling his stint as a reluctant draftee at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, described venomous slurs mouthed by his fellow airmen during Kennedy’s visit to the base on Nov. 21, and celebration among those dissenters on hearing of his death a day later.

Sometimes the assassination was a central theme, as when Ms. Dukakis affectingly portrayed the wife of Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the event, in “The Day Before,” a monologue by Arthur Kopit. Sometimes it was incidental but still had an impact, as in “The Day Before and During,” Josip Novakovich’s whimsical reminiscence of boyhood in Tito’s Yugoslavia, affectionately read by Mr. Wong. Sometimes it barely registered at all: “A Most Beautiful Death,” by Mr. Kopit and the composer Daniel Felsenfeld, recounted the final hours of Aldous Huxley, who died on Nov. 22.

Musical tributes similarly ranged from heavy-weather art song to pop-derived whimsy, much of it by composers not yet born when Kennedy died. The playwright Carter W. Lewis and the composer Kamala Sankaram balanced artifice and heart expertly in “John-John,” evoking Kennedy’s young son with ingenuity. Best of all was “The New Frontier,” in which Phil Kline captured with a lullaby’s soothing simplicity a fleeting moment when hope still held disillusionment and fear at bay.

Correction:Nov. 13, 2013

A music review on Tuesday about a program at Symphony Space in Manhattan, “November 21, 1963: The Day Before,” misstated the year that Laura Kaminsky became Symphony Space’s artistic director. It was 2010, not 2008.